"A Chinese Odyssey" did not have a detailed script until the filming started, but was just a rough idea. The idea was taken from "Jeffrey Lau", who is also the director and screenwriter Jeffrey Lau. The candidate for "Supreme Treasure" in the play is not in Jeffrey Lau's opinion. Stephen Chow is none other than that. Prior to this, Stephen Chow has collaborated with Jeffrey Lau on a number of films, including Stephen Chow's famous work "The Holy Gambling". Also in the creation of "A Chinese Odyssey", Stephen Chow provided a lot of opinions, and even many popular dialogues came from him.
In the first half of 1994, Hong Kong producer Sung-lin Tsai began to cooperate withIn contact with the filming matters, when I first saw the script outline, "A Chinese Odyssey" did not arouse more interest from Western Film Studio, but considering the market appeal of Stephen Chow and the commercial interests of Hong Kong films ("The Holy Gambling", " The box office of "Tang Bohu Dian Qiuxiang" reached more than 40 million yuan), Xiying Factory agreed to cooperate and chose Ningxia Town’s Beibao Film and Television City, which had filmed "Red Sorghum" and other films, as its location shooting base. In July and August 1994, " "A Chinese Odyssey" officially started shooting.
The filming of the first and second episodes was completed in more than 100 days. The filming work was divided into three groups. Group A was directed by Jeffrey Lau to shoot the literary scenes, Group B was taken care of by Cheng Xiaodong for the martial arts scenes, and Group C returned to Xi'an after the location shooting. When the interior shot was composed, the actors and staff rushed to the scene to shoot. Time was tight and hard work. There were also trivial frictions between the crews in Hong Kong and Xi'an. However, the staff at Xiying Studio expressed their admiration for the professionalism of the Hong Kong actors. After the filming of the entire film was completed, Xiying had objections to the finished film. Zhang Zien , then deputy director of art, believed that the film could not represent the artistic pursuit of Xiying, and could even be regarded as cultural rubbish.
